North Adams, Massachusetts

Sprague Electric Company was an electronic component maker founded by Robert C. Sprague in 1926. Sprague was best known for making a large line of capacitors used in a wide variety of electrical and electronic in commercial, industrial and military/space applications. Other products include resistive components, magnetic components (transformers and coils), filter assemblies, semiconductors and integrated circuits.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing arts in the United States. Built by the Arnold Print Works, which operated on the site from 1860 to 1942, the complex was used by the Sprague Electric company before its conversion. MASS MoCA originally opened with 19 galleries and 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) of exhibition space in 1999. It has expanded since, including the 2008 expansion of Building 7 and the May 2017 addition of roughly 130,000 square feet when Building 6 was opened.In addition to housing galleries and performing arts spaces, it also rents space to commercial tenants. It is the home of the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, where composers and performers from around the world come to create new music. The festival, started in 2001, includes concerts in galleries for three weeks during the summer. Starting in 2010, MASS MoCA has become the home for the Solid Sound Music Festival. MASS MoCA, along with the Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), forms a trio of significant art museums in the northern Berkshires.

The North Adams strike (also called North Adams Scandal) was a strike in 1870 by shoe workers of the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin, against Calvin T. Sampson's Shoe factory, in North Adams, Massachusetts. The strike itself was broken when the factory superintendent, George W. Chase, fired the Irish workers, replacing them with newly employed seventy-five Chinese men from California. Bringing national attention to North Adams, the event started a nation-wide trend of bringing in scab labor and helped perpetuate the concept of immigrants coming to the United States to steal jobs, which led to much hostility towards Chinese immigrants across the nation.

The Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum was a museum proposed for North Adams, Massachusetts that plans to display model trains running through a landscape of notable modern architecture. Architect Frank Gehry has contracted to design the new museum, which will be located a few blocks away from the MASS MoCA modern art museum. Thomas Krens, former director of the Guggenheim Museum who oversaw the creation of the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and a Mass MoCA founder, is heading the creation of the new museum.The plan calls for an 83,000-square-foot museum to be built at an estimated cost to $65 million, featuring model trains running continuously past scale-models of buildings by notable architects including Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Frank Gehry. It will be built on publicly owned land overlooking a disused rail freight yard; the proposed Museum holds an option to purchase the land. About half of the financing is projected to come from state and local government funds allocated to support the growth of tourism, and half from private donations of which $2.5 million had been raised by August 2017.As of 2017 the projected opening date was 2020, but as of February 2022 the new projected opening date is 2025. As of January 2023 the project did not have a start date or funding finalized.

The North Adams Museum of History and Science is located on State Street in North Adams, Massachusetts as part of Western Gateway Heritage State Park. The building it inhabits was originally built in 1880 as a coal distribution center. The museum, however, was established by the North Adams Historical Society in 1988.The first floor of the museum contains exhibits on the Industrial Revolution, and its effects on what became an industrial center during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This exhibit displays machine parts and goods of some of the major manufacturing companies in the town during this era: Hunter Machine Company, Arnold Printworks and Sprague Electric. This floor also contains artifacts that depict farming, education, and home life during this era. One can find a children’s room, North Adams school paraphernalia, city uniforms, and household objects. The second floor is particularly notable for its Freight Yard exhibit. A moving train set has been constructed to model the town of North Adams and its train system. In this room there are also exhibits on immigration, which highlights French, Lebanese, Welsh, Italian, Jewish, Irish, and Chinese immigration to the area; religion, mainly by showing the churches that have been built in North Adams; and ballooning. In an adjacent room exist displays on flora and fauna, geography (containing a topographical map of this area of the Berkshires), and a kids’ room relating to flora and fauna of the area. Finally, the third floor is centered on political and military history of the area. It contains a voting machine from the nineteenth century, information on past mayors of North Adams, information on military heroes of the area, and Native American artifacts of those who inhabited the area before the settlers. There is also a side room dedicated to Fort Massachusetts, an English fort in North Adams during the French and Indian War. Finally, there is also a blacklight gallery that is used as a display of the Solar System. The museum’s hours are Saturday 10AM-4PM and Sunday 1-4PM November through April, and Thursday through Saturday 10AM-4PM and Sunday 1-4PM May through October. The museum is closed on holidays.

Western Gateway Heritage State Park is a history-focused Massachusetts state park in the city of North Adams managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. Exhibits at the park, which is located in a former railyard, tell the story of the creation of the Hoosac Tunnel. The freight yard was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 as the Freight Yard Historic District.

The Hathaway Tenement is a historic tenement house located in North Adams, Massachusetts. A row of six apartment units, it was built in about 1850, and is a rare surviving example of worker housing dating to the early period of North Adams' industrial development. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The Johnson Manufacturing Company was a historic mill complex at 65 Brown Street in North Adams, Massachusetts. Developed beginning in 1872 and enlarged through the early 20th century, it was at the time of its 1985 listing on the National Register of Historic Places a well-preserved example of late 19th century industrial architecture, used for the production of textiles for many years. The complex was demolished in 2007.

The Johnson School is a historic former school building on School Street in North Adams, Massachusetts. Built about 1898, this Romanesque Revival school is a significant work of the prominent local architect Edwin Thayer Barlow. It was the last of the city's neighborhood schools to be closed. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It is now used for Head Start and other social programs.

The Monument Square–Eagle Street Historic District is a historic district encompassing the civic heart of North Adams, Massachusetts. When it was originally designated in 1972, the district encompassed Monument Square – west of the intersection of Main Street and Church Street, and the location of a Civil War memorial – and the area around it. This designation included the North Adams Public Library (formerly the Blackinton Mansion), the First Baptist Church and First Congregational Church, and a block of shops Eagle Street. In 1988, the district's boundaries were increased to be roughly bounded by Holden, Center and Union Streets, the East Middle School (now the Silvio O. Conte Middle School), Summer Street, and Main Street. This expansion extended the district westward along Summer Street to include the US Post Office building and St. John's Church, and eastward to include Colgrove Park, the middle school, and St. Francis Catholic Church. An additional block of commercial buildings was also added on the north side of West Main Street, extending just west of Holden Street.North Adams was settled as part of Adams in the mid-18th century, and soon developed as an industrial village, powered by the waters of the two branches of the Hoosic River, which meet just northwest of its central business district. The waterfront areas were developed with mills producing a variety of goods, which were eventually dominated by textiles beginning in the mid-19th century. The central business district around Monument Square, were the town's Baptist Church was founded in 1808, led by Otis Blackinton, whose family would dominate the local industrial business landscape. Most of the city's business district was developed between about 1870 and 1920, the greatest period of its economic success. A major decline was begun by the Great Depression, resulting in little growth in subsequent decades.

Hillside Cemetery is a historic cemetery on West Main Street (Massachusetts Route 2) between Brown Street and Charles Street in North Adams, Massachusetts, United States. Located on the western fringe of the city, the earliest portions of the cemetery date to 1798; it is the community's oldest public burying ground. The cemetery is divided by Route 2, with the older section to the north and the younger section (laid out in 1858) to the south. The cemetery's location at the foot of Mount Greylock gives it excellent views of the surrounding area, and of the urban core of North Adams.The older portion of the cemetery is less formally laid out than the newer section. It includes a fairly steeply sloped hill and a bowl-shaped valley, and is lined by grassy paths laid out in a grid. The oldest graves are at the top of the hill, the oldest dating to 1798. The southern portion of the cemetery is much larger, and is laid out with narrow roadways, most of which were in place by 1878. The terrain of the southern section is similar to that of the northern, also featuring a hill and valley. The most prominent memorial is the Tinker Mausoleum (1926), located in the northern section.The oldest surviving cemetery in North Adams is the Old Congregational Burying Ground (1780). Hillside appears to have been established as a family cemetery of the locally prominent Knight family, who buried their daughter Olive in 1798. Members of the Knight family were among the first to introduce textile manufacturing into North Adams, its early source of growth and prosperity in the 19th century. The town of Adams (from which North Adams separated in 1878) purchased the southern tract in 1858. North Adams' second public cemetery, located in the southern part of the city, was opened in 1898.The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

The Freeman's Grove Historic District is a residential historic district in North Adams, Massachusetts. It encompasses a neighborhood north of the city center that is a well-preserved instance of a working class area developed during its industrial heyday in the late 19th century. It includes the Chase Hill Estate as well as all the houses on Chase Avenue, Bracewell Street, Hall Street and several smaller streets adjacent to those. It is roughly bounded by Liberty Street, Eagle Street, Bracewell Avenues and Houghton Street. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.